Background
Taylor was born in Carlisle, Massachusetts to Nathaniel A. and Ellen F. (Davis) Taylor.
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Albert Davis
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He designed parks and other public works, subdivisions and private estates, primarily in Ohio. He received an Bachelor of Arts from Boston College in 1905 and an M.L.A. from the College of Agriculture at Cornell University in 1906, where he taught until 1908. He then joined the office of Warren H. Manning, where he was influenced by Manning’s informal and naturalistic approach to landscape design as he worked on such projects as Stan Hywet Hall in Akron.
In 1914 Taylor established his own practice in Cleveland, eventually opening a second office in Florida.
His firm provided landscape design for the Van Sweringens’ Daisy Hill Estate in Cleveland, Josip Juraj Emery’s Peterloon Estate in Cincinnati, the His (or Her) Highness Timken Estate in Canton, and Julius Fleischmann’s Winding Creek Farm. The office also designed the Avondale subdivision in Akron and the Rookwood subdivision in Cincinnati.
During the Depression, Taylor participated in a number of CWA projects. The following is a partial list of public works on which his firm worked:
Alms Park, Cincinnati, Ohio
Ault Park, Cincinnati, Ohio
Baldwin Filtration Plant Reservoir, Cleveland, Ohio
Boys Town, Nebraska
Cumberland Park, Cleveland Heights, Ohio
Mountain.
Echo Park, Cincinnati, Ohio
Forest Hill Park, Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland, Ohio
Marine Hospitals, Cleveland, Ohio, Baltimore, Maryland and New Orleans, Louisiana
The Pentagon, Virginia
Taylor helped found the landscape architecture program at Ohio State University and served as a non-resident professor in the program from 1916 to 1926.
Notable among Taylor"s many publications was his 1921 book, The Complete Garden. During the New Deal, Taylor was a consultant for the United States. Forest Service, conducting a needs and requirements survey of the national forests in 1936. Increasing public use of national forests made it necessary to reevaluate the standard of landscape design throughout the system in an effort to preserve the natural aspects of the forest, while accommodating their use.
Taylor"s papers (1918–1942) are archived at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
